The excitement around #20PercentTuesday continues to grow. I am thrilled to watch the proejcts evolve and watch the students enter the class every Tuesday eager to get right to work.
There are so many projects happening and they cover a wide variety of tools, technologies, and innovative ideas. I truly believe this is the way to encourage students to discover a passion for learning and areas they may not have known they were interested in. If I can provide that opportunity for my students, I feel I have done good by them!
Below are some images of what you would see happening if you walked around my room on any given #20PercentTuesday (or lunch period for that matter)
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| Creating a racing game in Disney Infinity |
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| Demonstrating the Go-Dough game controller in Action |
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| Student created @snapguide #minecraft tutorial |
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| Learning to use MIT App Inventor from a YouTube tutorial: "Watch it...Build it" |
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| Installing Unreal Engine! Almost time to start building a Virtual World to explore with the Oculus Rift! |
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| Sketch of house that will be built in Sketch Up and Explored with the Oculus Rift! |
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| Programming the "brain" of a character in Project Spark |
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| Creating a Text based Adventure using Twine |
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| Getting started with SketchUp |
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| Programming Command Blocks in Minecraft |
There was much more happening, but this gives a nice idea of the kinds of projects students have been working on this week.
Here are a few student reflections from the week:
1. My partner and I are working with the Oculus Rift
2. So far we have learned the basics of what SketchUp and Unity and how they work, we are still looking at vdeos of how to and good ways to make a basic house
3. The progress we have made is, we made on a piece of paper the house and items and downloaded sketchup but we still are watching and looking at videos to get a good hold of what we are going to do
4.Next steps: Hopefully starting the basics of the house then advancing to the hard details of the house.
5. Honestly I feel the nerves and excitement thinking about the day we get to play it and thats my real aha moment just seeing that day
1. The tool that I am working with is twine to create a text based adventure.
2. So far, I have learned to code a text based adventure and do it fast. I have also learned how to organize and create a text based adventure game.
3. My progress so far is I created the outline or brainstorm in popplet. I have also began programming my actual game in twine. Yesterday in class, I continued programming and making my game. I am about halfway done with making my game.
4. Moving Foward, I plan on just finishing my original game. I will then ask for feedback and make corrections to the game accordingly. Once my game is revised and finished, I will publish it for the class to play.
5. One aha moment that I have had was when I realized I had to become fast at coding each individual part in my story. Another aha moment I had was when I realized that I needed to learn how to save and upload my story to google drive so that I could do additional work at home.
At this point, students are at different phases of their projects. It is awesome to see them taking ownership of their learning. I am constantly reminded of how kids learn in informal learning spaces (youtube, tutorials, wikis, peers, etc.). The 20%Time Passion Project model is one of the best ways to nurture authentic student learning. Stay tuned for more reflections and student blog posts.
